Disclosed is an idler roller assembly for use with a printing apparatus.
In a typical printing apparatus, media such as paper will be stored in a tray or trays. When printing occurs, typically the paper or media will be pulled from the tray and fed through a printing feed path. Typically the paper will be driven through the printing feed path by rollers assemblies, each of which may include a drive roller assembly and an idler roller assembly. Where the printer is an electrophotographic printer, the roller assemblies will drive the paper along the printing feed path to printing elements such as a photoreceptor, fuser, and the like. Where the printer is an ink jet printer, the roller assemblies will drive the paper along the printing feed path to printing elements such as an inkjet printhead, a print assembly, a pressure roll, and the like, and eventually to an output tray.
The idler roller assemblies are often made of a lightweight and low cost material, such as plastic. The idler roller assembly typically includes a shaft with one or a pair of idler rolling elements. The idler rolling elements are aligned with drive roller elements to form nips for driving the paper or other media. To ensure control of the media and to minimize wear of the drive roller elements, the idler rolling elements must maintain substantial parallelism to the shaft of the idler assembly.